The Watcher
by luckybear101
Summary: When Sylar recieves a tattoo of Claire he seeks her out to discuss their future.


**A/N: I was in no way in this particular camp until last Monday. I thought the people in this camp were crazy loons, but I now find myself being one of you. Not to say we're actually crazy… just different. *grin***

**Um… I have no idea why, but I just expected that the tattoo would have something to do with Claire. Then the very end of the episode gave me this kind of idea for a story. Basically this takes place after the end of the last episode where Sylar is standing outside her window looking in at her. I kind of had this idea, what would happen if she became aware that he was there?**

**This is my first Heroes type story, so it might not be very good in that aspect. I would appreciate your comments both good and bad as to what I have written. I might even extent it if you wish it to be more than a one-shot.**

The Watcher:

Claire plopped down on her bed with a sigh feeling like she had run a marathon. She had kind of hoped that she would get the chance to talk to Gretchen, but of course she had arrived back at her dorm room to find that her roommate was nowhere to be found. "Just great," Claire muttered staring up at the ceiling.

It had been a very long day, and somehow the idea of getting to talk it through pleased her for some reason. Normally the last thing she would want to do was talk about what was going on with her. But of course this was different. Claire had found herself mourning the death of the father she barely knew who had been dead for quite awhile. Now that she thought about it, she couldn't quite figure out how she had not known some place inside her that the man she had been around all those times had in fact not been Nathan. And how has she managed to feel love for a man who had basically be trying to kill her for years. "Nathan," she kind of muttered to herself, "you felt love for Nathan not Sylar."

Claire sighed again closing her eyes and trying to think of anything else than the events of that day. It was as she lay there trying to find something to hold her attention that it struck her that something was wrong. Even from the watcher's point of view outside it was obvious how quickly her body had changed. Claire had been lying there completely relaxed almost asleep even, and then suddenly every muscle in her body began to tense. Her eyes flew open as she tried to think through what had gotten her so panicked all of the sudden.

Claire sat up cautiously looking around the room. She was sure that it wasn't someone invisible in the room. "No, whatever it is isn't in here," she muttered to herself slowly frowning. She couldn't explain how she knew it, but she just knew the threat wasn't right at hand that very moment.

Claire slowly got off the bed walking over to the door. She looked through the peephole her father had put in hesitantly. There was no one within sight. "That doesn't mean there's no one there," Claire muttered to herself. "Someone could be standing out of the peephole's range."

Claire stood facing the door of her dorm room trying to think of what could possibly be going on when she heard the window slide almost silently open. She spun around quicker than even she thought possible her heart pounding somewhere near her ears.

She stood there frozen as a tall man she instantly recognized entered in through the window and straightened himself up as if that had been his plan all along. Claire cast around her mind trying to find something to say. "I thought you were dead," was what came out. The very last thing she had planned to say particularly in the tone she had chosen.

"Don't sound so disappointed," Sylar responded in an amused tone that confused Claire.

She was unsure as to what she was supposed to say in response to his sudden arrival in her dorm room. Then it hit her, "What do you want? Why are you here?" she asked sounding suddenly concerned.

Sylar cocked his head to the side as if he was surveying her. "I've come to eat your brain," he said as if that was the most natural thing in the world to say.

"My brain?" Claire responded slowly blinding furiously. "But that's just disgusting."

Sylar chuckled as if he had hoped she would say that. "Did you miss me?" he asked seeming to be teasing her.

"Not in the slightest," Claire responded bitingly. "Now tell me, what is it you want? Is this about my father? Are you going to kill me to hurt him or something?"

Sylar laughed. "I told you, I couldn't kill you even if I wanted to. And I don't want to by the way."

Claire scoffed as if she thought the idea that he didn't want to kill her completely unfathomable. That had to be why he had come. She glared in his direction trying to read him. "You glare at me all you want, it won't help," Sylar said sounding a little amused.

"I understand how things work, how people work. I understand how to fix things that are broken," he in response to her confused look.

"Understanding things and how they work?" Claire asked sounding the power out. "And who'd you have to kill to get that nifty little trick?"

Sylar seemed to size her up as if that would help him find the right answer. "Gabriel Gray," he finally said with something akin to remorse in his voice. "See, it was the only power that was ever truly mine in the way that regeneration is truly yours. In fact, it's what made me a damn fine watchmaker, if I say so myself."

Claire nodded as if that was the only thing she could think to do. "So that's why you do what you do?" she asked finally. "With the cutting open people's skulls and routing around in their brains?"

Sylar looked introspective for a moment. "Yes. And no," he answered slowly. When Claire looked confused he continued. "My ability is like an itch. You really want to scratch it, but the itch is caused by poison ivy. See, when you scratch it poison ivy spreads. The more you scratch the more it spreads. My ability is like that. It causes this hungry, this drive to know more, to have more. And the more you know, the more you have, the more you want."

"Are you trying to tell me you never wanted to kill?" Claire asked sounding skeptical again.

"Well, I certainly never wanted to kill my mother if that's what your implying," Sylar answered defensively.

"You killed your own mother?" Claire asked sounding appalled.

"No… I…" Sylar sputtered seeming to have thought Claire already knew about that event from his past. "It was self-defense!" he said once he had collected his thoughts again.

"Really? Did she have some interesting power that you felt you just had to have?"

"No!" Sylar said defensively sounding almost angry with her all of the sudden. He stood there for a moment and a change seemed to come over him. With a deep breath he said in almost a whisper, "She collected snow globes, just loved the things. I thought she might enjoy it if I made it snow for her like her own personal snow globe." Sylar sighed. "But it must have scared her that I could do this unusual thing because she came at me with a pair of scissors, and the next thing I knew she was dead on the floor."

"And that is the whole truth of what happened?" Claire asked skeptically.

Sylar sighed. "More or less. I got angry with her, we fought, she said I wasn't her son and to get out, and she held the scissors to keep me away from her. There was a struggle, and she died."

"But she wasn't your mother," Claire stated latching on to a piece of information from the past.

"She was. In the same way that Noah Bennett is your father," Sylar said simply.

"And how is that?"

"Well," Sylar said, "he raised you as if you were his daughter. He cared for you, loved you. And I imagine you felt the same for him. In the end it doesn't matter that he isn't your father in the biological sense."

"So is that how you reason killing Nathan?" Claire shot back crossing her arms across her chest.

Sylar smiled in a kind of way that said he was not truly amused at all. "I had a feeling we would come to that. In fact I knew you would be angry with me about it."

"Then why did you kill him?" Claire asked quite reasonably. "Why did you then impersonate him?"

"I had plans to which killing Nathan was necessary. I have since abandoned those plans for something else entirely. As for the latter, I had no choice in the matter, believe me. Matt Parkman can be very persuasive when he wants to be."

"A persuasiveness I'm sure you've done away with," Claire shot back.

"No, dear Matt is very much alive. I would say well, but he was in a bit of trouble with the cops when we parted ways. I originally thought of making those pay who had robbed me of my body, but then I thought of all the more important things I had left to do like return to you my darling."

Claire stood frozen unsure how she should responded to that. "I thought I told you I would spend the rest of my life hunting you down and killing you," she said after a moment of reflection.

Sylar chuckled. "I believe you did. The thing is Claire, the rest of _our_ lives is a very long time indeed. They could be hundreds, nay thousands of years long. Do you really want to spend the next millennia trying to kill me when I am the only person you know who won't be dead soon."

"Do not threaten my family," Claire responded through gritted teeth.

"Who said I was threatening anybody?" Sylar asked completely serious.

"You said they'd all be dead soon as if you had personal knowledge as to their deaths," Claire pointed out.

"Soon is relative. Soon from their point of view could be tomorrow or next week, but soon for us is fifty years. I mean you say that you will spend the rest of your life hunting me, trying to kill me now, but in a century, or two? Everyone dies but the two of us. Adam Monroe lived for over four hundred years, and there was every chance he was going to live for four hundred more before your dear grandfather got a hold of him."

"And what exactly does Adam Monroe have to do with me?" Claire asked obviously tiring of their little back and forth.

"I'm just saying that forever is a long time when you conceivably have forever," Sylar said fairly.

"Eight hundred years is forever to you?" Claire asked.

"Maybe not by itself, but look at it this way, dear Noah will be lucky if he has fifty years. And that is not a threat," he added at the last minute halting Claire's unspoken protest.

"You don't want to kill him?" Claire asked skeptically.

"I never said that," Sylar admitted. "I mainly want to kill him because I have a nasty feeling he will interfere, but I sense that killing him might have more harm than good. Though if he tries to kill me again I make no promises."

Claire blinked furiously trying to make sense of what Sylar was trying to say. "What do you mean by more harm than good? What exactly is there for my father to interfere in?"

"Oh," Sylar said fairly, "I feel he'll have some issues with me and you."

Claire choked trying not to laughing. "There is no me and you. I hate you."

"Now," Sylar pointed out. "We've been over this Claire. Unlike your other little boyfriends, I have the time to wait. Oh, can I wait. I can wait until Noah Bennett is dead if I have to, though I would rather not, I must admit."

"I will still hate you in fifty years," Claire said venomously.

Sylar laughed. "Oh dear Claire, you know what they say about love and hate, there is a very fine line separating the two. It took me a while to realize that I was in love with you. I expect it to take you a little while given one of my most recent sins, but it will happen. You will one day come to see that you love me too."

"I will never love you Sylar, and you will never love me. Unless of course you count cutting off the top of someone's head love."

Sylar's face hardened. "I couldn't help it. I didn't know how to take your power without doing that then. I never wanted to hurt you. If only you could have seen how much it hurt me to hurt you like that."

"Feeling compelled to do it doesn't change the fact that you are a psychopathic blood-thirsty sadistic serial killer," Claire shot back venomously partly because she just knew it would hurt him. "I could never love you."

"But one day maybe you will love Gabriel Gray," he said softly enough she almost didn't hear him.

Claire's anger subsided slightly. "But you never want to be Gabriel Gray. You want to be Sylar."

"No. I never wanted to be a killer. I wanted to be special, different. I never wanted to hurt people in the process. But a man came to me who could move objects with his mind and wanted to be fixed as if he was broken. He was not broken; he was extraordinary. How can you turn your back on something like that? How can you just give that away? I was this meek, mild watchmaker who had always wanted to be special, and here was someone who was special who wanted to be ordinary."

"So you killed him?" Claire asked lamely.

Sylar nodded seeming to be in a trance. Claire was surprised to see something akin to disgust on his face. Seeming to come to again he said, "And once I had done it I felt bad, but there was a part of me that wanted to do it again."

"If you hated being the meek, mild mannered watchmaker, why would you want to go back to that?" Claire asked in a level headed kind of way.

"I don't in a way, but then in others I do. I will be Gabriel again if you wish it of me. But I see now I can be both. There is no reason that I can't live my life without killing people. There is no reason at all I must live my life alone."

Claire stood there just staring at him. She looked down to see a tattoo on Sylar's arm. Though she couldn't make out the picture she recognized the style. "What did you do to Lydia?" she snapped suddenly. She had kind of liked Lydia for the short time she had known her.

"Oh, the tattoo," Sylar said hiding his forearm from view. "I will have you know I did nothing to her other than maybe hurt her feelings."

"But you have her power?" Claire asked sounding unsure.

"I have learned how to take powers without slicing people's heads open."

"You didn't kill her?" Sylar nodded. "So, what's up with the tattoo then?"

Sylar sighed. "Lydia said that the tattoos are a road map of where we need to go. This first one is supposed to be where I belong, my destiny."

"And it is of?" Claire prompted.

Sylar seemed to be weighing his options. "You." He held up his forearm to show her what he meant.

Claire stared at the tattoo for a long time wondering what there was to say. After a few minutes of silence Sylar said, "I will go since that is what you want from me, but know this, I will always be in the background watching, waiting. The day will come when you will no longer want me to go. But for now that day is far off, so I will leave you in peace."

Sylar exited out the window closing it behind him. Claire stood looking at the space where he had stood only a few moments before wondering why a small part of her was actually sad to see **him go.**


End file.
